Moses Begins
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
August 24, 2014
Exodus 1: 8-14; 22; 2: 1-10
“[Rabbi] Reshi gives credit to [the Egyptian Princess’] way of seeing; she ‘sees It, the Presence of God, with the child.’ Her way of seeing makes room for the ‘hidden sphere,’ the ‘complex ferment’ that is The Presence of God in the crying voice of a child.” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture
If you noticed that the title of this sermon sounds a lot like “Batman Begins,” there’s a reason for that. Moses Moses is the first true hero of two faiths. Even Jesus based his ministry on Moses’ model. Moses begins it all. Before Moses, there was no Hebrew people. Before Moses, the Hebrews had no coherent identity. Sources from Egyptian times, sources far more ancient than the Bible, tell us that a group of disparate tribes arrived in Egypt about the time of the Great Famine. They may not have seen themselves as connected to one another at all. But the Egyptians referred to them as a collective, much as we tend to call all people from the south of the border Hispanic or Latinos, whether they are Mexican or Guatemalan or Colombian. The collective term the Egyptians used was Habiru. And it’s likely that is the source of the term Hebrew for the people who Moses saved.
When these people first arrived in Egypt, probably the only thing they had in common was that they were strangers in a strange land, desperate for food. But some two hundred years after they arrived, according to scripture, they found a common identity in a terrible shared experience: slavery.
Rabbinical scholar Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg wonders that the oppressed Habiru did not cry out to God in their distress. Had they lost faith? Had the burden of bitumen and pitch, the constant making of the bricks, the building of the Sphinx and the pyramids so weighed down the Habiru that any thought or hope of God was lost to them? After all, even today people of faith lose hope. I have friends and have seen church folks over the years who are so burdened and afflicted that they’ve given up calling on God because it hurts too much to call out and feel like you just aren’t being heard. And that certainly is the plight of the Habiru slaves.
Then something happens. Though the Pharaoh has called for the death of all male firstborn, one infant escapes, through the cleverness of his mother and sister and two female midwives. They place him in a tiny boat made of bitumen and pitch and straw, just like the bricks the Hebrews are forced to make. Essentially, they put their baby in a brick and set him in the river. And Pharaoh’s daughter, bathing by the river, hears something amazing—a baby crying out from the brick of oppression. The infant Moses gives voice to the unspoken cry of the Hebrew people in the midst of slavery. And so he will continue as an adult, when he cries out to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!”
Where has God been all this time that the Hebrews have been enslaved? There’s no easy answer. But the rabbis teach that “It, the Presence of God,” was in the cry of the child Moses. It’s almost as if, until that child cried out, God couldn’t be present—but once he did, God was there and would not go away.
Moses’ mother is a slave to the daughter of Pharaoh, and she and her daughter have deliberately set the bitumen and pitch and straw boat on a course that insures that Pharaoh’s daughter will find the baby. This is a complex strategy. Moses’ mother and sister believe that even though the princess’ father is the one who has condemned Hebrew children to death, his daughter is too compassionate to turn down a baby floating on the river. Moses’ mother and sister believe that the princess will do exactly what she does—give them the child to raise, not realizing she’s returning the child to her own mother.
Zornberg tells us that rabbinical tradition has honored the daughter of Pharaoh because she has the foresight and the vision to ‘see It, the Presence of God, with the child.’ Her way of seeing makes room for the ‘hidden sphere,’ the ‘complex ferment’ that is The Presence of God in the crying voice of a child.” (Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture. New York: Shocken Books, 2001. pp. 51-2)
That’s what we do today as we take up an offering to support Catholic Charities in its ministry to the unaccompanied children who have come to our border to escape violence and poverty in their home countries. Regardless of what we think about the politics of the situation, they are children. Their cries come to us. The presence of God is in those cries. We have no choice but to listen and respond with kindness and compassion.
For us today those children have the virtue of immediacy. They’re right here in Texas. But there are lots of children, far away, in need. I heard a news photographer on the radio recently speaking with pain in his voice about taking pictures of ten year old Saah Exco in Liberia stricken with ebola. He said he could see other people wishing they could reach out, wanting to help, but they feared the disease itself; and the young boy died alone.
And in the Gaza right now, it’s the same, with hundreds of Palestinian children killed in fighting between Hamas and Israel; and likewise, in Iraq, where ISIS is targeting Christian families and their children, and many Iraqi Christians are wondering, where is the American church? Don’t American Christians know that Iraqi Christians are dying?
It’s never easy to know what to do with these tragic situations. It can be overwhelming to hear the cries of the suffering children throughout the world. Of course we can’t help them all. But we can’t turn our back on them either. They’re the voice of God crying out to us, the presence of God in the midst of suffering. Once we’ve heard it, we have to recognize it for what it is, and do what we can.
The voice of God is an odd thing. Disciples Pastor Fred Craddock told a story once about being in Belgium during World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge. One Sunday he and a friend noticed a lovely Reformed Church nearby. They decided to attend it. They walked in and removed their helmets. The organist played the prelude, the lector read the readings, and the preacher preached his sermon. The whole time these two GIs were the only congregation in attendance. After the service, Private Craddock asked the preacher what he would have done if the two of them hadn’t been there. He replied, “We would have still held the service and I would still have preached the sermon. The Word of God must go forth.”
Craddock thought a lot about that over the years, and he says now that he doesn’t entirely agree with the Belgian pastor. “The Word of God is on the mouth of the speaker,” Craddock says, “but it is also on the ear of the listener.”
The Presence of God is always in the cries of the suffering but it also has to be on the ears of the listener. We have to listen to their cries with the same spiritual attentiveness as the daughter of pharaoh listened to the cries of Moses. The presence of God is in both the cries, and our response. That doesn’t always mean that we have to do something directly about it. Pharaoh’s daughter immediately delegates the child Moses to her servant, not knowing she’s his mother. Likewise, we do a lot of delegating. We delegate homelessness to the Night Shelter and to Tarrant County Homeless Coalition. We delegate providing food and essentials to the South Central Alliance. We delegate on a larger worldwide scale via the denomination, through missions and Presbyterian Disaster Relief. Of course, this delegating takes concrete form. The church gives them money. Maybe you donate directly as well. The point is not that we have to solve, or directly involve ourselves, but we must, in the name of Christ, listen with open and empathetic hearts.
One of the most important ways we respond to the cries of the needy is to pray. People put prayer down, as if that’s what Christians do instead of reaching out in compassion. Not true at all. Our denomination is busy throughout the world, and we ourselves reach out to do what we can. But we can’t touch everybody. We can’t go to Liberia or Nigeria and deal with ebola; anyway, most of us don’t have the skills. So we pray. We put what we can’t do in the hands of God. Prayer for others is an act of empathy and compassion. When we can’t do anything else, but we still feel the pain of people in need, we respond to that need in prayer.
This isn’t minor or unimportant. It’s evidence that we really do believe that God is present and at work in the world. The enslaved Habiru had given up hope that that was true—until Moses came. We prove our hope in God by doing what we can, and praying about what we can’t.
Praying doesn’t feel like enough. So when you’re praying remember baby Moses crying in his little boat. He is giving voice to the suffering of others, and so are we. And God hears that voice, and God will act.